Installing My Coloring Book on Homestead

Follow these instructions to install on your Homestead account.

Step 1: Extract the installation files

With Homestead you have to upload each of the files in the installation one at a time, so the first step is to extract the mcb.zip file which you downloaded onto your local computer.

Do this wherever makes sense to you.  For example extracting to your "Documents" folder will create a "Documents/mcb" directory.

It will be a good idea to keep this there as you continue adding new coloring pages etc.

Step 2: Get MOST of the files onto the site

  1. Go to the File Manager, and create a New Folder, called "mcb".
  2. Click on the new "mcb" folder, and then create 3 New Folders, called "config", "history" and "page".
  3. Still in the "mcb" folder, click Import, and then browse to the directory where you extracted the mcb.zip file.
  4. Import each file in the "mcb" folder - EXCEPT the two ".swf" files (if you try it will say you cannot).
  5. Then do the same for each of the 3 folders.  E.g. Go into "config" and import the contents of the "config" directory from the files you previously extracted from the zip file.

Step 3: Uploading the SWF files

Uploading the SWF files requires a little trick...

  1. Choose any of your pages, and then click to insert a Media File (it doesn't matter where, because you are going to delete it anyway).
  2. Over in the properties area click to select the Multimedia File.
  3. Double click the "mcb" folder to open it (this makes sure the file you will upload goes to the right place).
  4. Click [Upload from Your Computer], and select "mcb.swf".
  5. Click [Upload from Your Computer], and select "playerProductInstall.swf".
  6. Now click the multimedia item on your page and DELETE it.

If you go into File Manager you should see that the two SWF files are now in the "mcb" folder.

Step 4: Publish all of the files

Before they can be used all of the files need to be published.

  1. Open the File Manager.
  2. Click on the "mcb" folder to select it.
  3. Click [Publish].

When you are done all the files Status should say "OK".

Step 5: Adding the coloring book (YAY!)

Now that all the files are in place, adding the coloring book is pretty easy.

  1. Select the page you want to put the coloring book on.
  2. Click the button to Add HTML.
  3. Size and position your HTML block.
  4. Click on [Enter or Paste HTML].
  5. Type in the following (changing the width and height to suit your needs)...
    <iframe width="750" height="550" src="/mcb/mcb.html#b=book1.xml"/>
  6. Click [OK].
  7. Save your page.

That's it!  Now when you publish the page you should be able to see the coloring book with the sample pictures.

Adding new pictures is pretty easy, as they are just GIF files which can be uploaded through the File Manager.  You may also want to set up the coloring book file (e.g. book1.xml) to group and order your pictures.

This is explained in more detail in the Using Coloring Books article.